iTether is a behavioral healthcare management platform that is sold to healthcare providers and payers, enabling them to offer patients and members both population-based and personalized treatment plans to address issues across the behavioral health spectrum. The digital platform is integrated into a mobile application in which patients can fully immerse themselves. The content includes health-literacy courses; a patient’s goals, assessments, appointments, activities, and other resources designed to deliver real-time care, improved outcomes, and generate feedback. The logic embedded in the assessment tools can trigger predefined alerts and required actions by clinical staff.

In 2017, Sean Gunderson, iTether’s CEO and cofounder, identified two drivers that led him to pursue a video-chat component to the platform:

iTether’s providers lamented the high patient no-show rates they were experiencing, the associated counselors’ downtime, and the resulting lost revenue.

Video technology, messaging, and video content courses being delivered asynchronously were not billable —– only synchronous telehealth was billable. (Asynchronous offerings will become billable by CMS in 2019.)

Gunderson believed that if iTether could add a quick, easy, and affordable virtual solution to its platform, then clients could use this enhanced platform to drive down the no-show rates.

In early 2018, Gunderson and Wes Hodges, iTether’s CTO, considered various video vendors — including Vidyo — with SDKs. They looked for a partner who:

Had a sophisticated API that supports multiple coding languages (including C# for mobile, Java Script, and Xamarin) and with which iTether could work and grow.

Offered bandwidth support for mobile users with limited data plans or located in remote areas.

Had an established customer base and a secure future.

Had a genuine interest in iTether’s mission.

Solution

In the summer of 2018, Gunderson and Hodges chose Vidyo’s vidyo.io API. vidyo.io’s ease of use and fast development time, the solution’s bandwidth throttling that maintains a consistent communication signal for all users, and Vidyo’s very helpful sales and engineering team were the primary reasons that drove their decision.

“I was very surprised by how easy the Vidyo solution was to implement versus some of the other video vendors that we considered. We had expected much more work to configure and implement Vidyo into our platform,” Hodges said.

For an iTether Vidyo session, a provider launches a video call from the patient record within the iTether web-based clinical portal. The patient receives a link on their mobile app to join the call.

Results

iTether trained its staff and clients on using the Vidyo solution, then conducted a soft launch with four customers in September 2018. The company expects to officially launch the telehealth-enhanced platform – which features HIPAA-compliant video – in the first quarter of 2019. With the Vidyo solution, the company will provide an integrated telehealth solution within a whole care management platform, relieving providers from having to use a separate standalone solution – including billing – for the telehealth session.

When a patient informs a facility that he or she will not make an appointment – even if that individual calls at the last minute – the provider can propose and immediately launch an on-the-spot telehealth session.

“Our telehealth solution offers a very strong ROI for our customers given they use our platform to reduce no-shows,” Gunderson said. “But it’s really about a better quality of care for the patient and the provider. When a clinician can meet immediately with an individual, they can prevent that patient from ending up in the ED/ER or in an adverse situation with law enforcement.”

According to Gunderson, the Vidyo solution also helps iTether acquire new customers. “When prospects see the ROI on the telehealth component – plus all of the other valuable components they get from our care management solution – that more than pays for our platform.”

iTether management initially thought that implementing video technology into its platform would be difficult to do. But Gunderson said, “We would’ve done this a year earlier if we’d known how quickly we could’ve integrated it. We’re very pleased with our partnership with Vidyo.”

Future Opportunities

iTether is looking to use the Vidyo solution for internal meetings because management believes that the video technology will be an effective collaboration tool for the company’s support staff.

Additionally, iTether is working on a Vidyo solution that will allow providers to conduct group video counseling sessions while protecting the identity and privacy of the participating patients.

iTether Technologies, provider of application development for behavioral change services, wins Phase 1 of Addressing Opioid Use Disorder in Pregnant Women and New Moms, a Grand Challenge created by The Health Resources and Services Administration’s (HRSA) Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB).

Phase 1 winners were chosen based on 5 main criteria: Accessibility – How accessible is the innovation to the population of focus and across social, cultural, and environmental factors; Sustainability – How encouraging is it to use and how well does it fit into daily life; Impact – How well does the applicant present a theory of change; Innovation – How likely is the proposed solution to succeed; and lastly, the overall projects potential in the remaining phases of the challenge.

iTether Technologiesdelivers a comprehensive care management solution that extends care beyond the clinic and drives data-driven decisions across the continuum of care. The purpose is to continuously engage patients (in this case, perinatal women with OUD) with multiple care professionals to coordinate treatment with personalized recovery goals for successful delivery and post-natal care for the baby and mother. With a flexible, easy to use mobile application, iTether supports the patients control over her treatment with features such as calendaring and events, reminders, patient-provider messaging, educational resources and social determinants of health, and social media support systems.

The death rate from opioid overdoses among women is dramatically increasing, and furthermore, so is the chance of a baby being born with neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS). In 2018 alone, 1,443 babies were born with NAS. These women and their prospective children are part of a national crisis of chronic and complex physical and mental health challenges that needs to be better addressed. HRSA’s goal with this challenge is to support innovative technology-based solutions that improve access to quality health care for pregnant and new mothers struggling with opioid use disorder (OUD). The challenge entrants included multidisciplinary teams of academics, health professionals, technology companies, IT designers, as well as individuals, community groups, and startups.

Making a Difference in Recovery

Mental and substance use disorders affect all communities nationwide, but with commitment and support, people suffering from these disorders can achieve healthy lifestyles and lead rewarding lives in recovery. The focus of National Recovery Month this September is to celebrate their journey with the theme Join the Voices for Recovery: Invest in Health, Home, Purpose, and Community. It spreads the message that behavioral health is essential to one’s overall wellness, and that prevention works, treatment is effective, and people recover.

We believe the first step in the fight against mental illness and substance abuse starts by transforming the way treatment is delivered to patients.

Healthcare providers are often the first contact for addressing behavioral health needs. However, there are not enough providers, resources, or time to tackle these issues head on. With only one mental health professional per every 529 individuals with a behavioral health condition, there is a critical opportunity to incorporate better prevention and treatment services into your practice.

By leveraging technology with integrated care, healthcare providers can stress less and care more. iTether delivers a HIPAA compliant, mobile enabled platform that makes it easy to manage and measure treatment plans so that you can engage with your patients, provide the best patient-centered, and achieve positive results.

The iTether Care Coordination Platform

Most people in treatment say that the programs don’t offer services that would make the biggest differences. Whether it’s appointment reminders, social determinant resources, or our built in, data-driven analytics, iTether supports the needs of each individual.

Proven outcomes

Evidence based practices are often only proven to work for one scenario, but not every patient should be treated the same. For an effective treatment plan, a provider should understand the importance of individual needs and be able to link an evidence-based approach to the real-world situation.

Treating the whole person

Current treatments don’t supply building blocks of life. Patients in recovery need better access to social determinant resources to help get them past the barriers of living a normal life. They need greater flexibility and to stay engaged even when they are in their own environment. The battle is won in their everyday life, not just in the clinic.

You can make a difference

Recovery Month is about coming together to improve the lives of those affected by mental and substance use disorders. Together, we can work to support recovery, implement preventive measures, recognize the signs of a problem, and guide those in need to appropriate treatment and support services. You have the power to change how the industry supports those experiencing mental and substance use disorders.

We’d love to hear from you! What are you currently doing to manage and build your patient relationships?

Schedule a demoto see how iTether can help you and your patients become more successful on the road to recovery.

There are a variety of training resources to support health care providers seeking to implement quality care for patients they serve who have mental and substance use disorders. Below is a list of informational, educational, and training resources to learn how to make behavioral health a key component of patient care.

iTether Technologies Wins 2018 Progress App Innovation Award

iTether Technologies is proud to announce that we have been chosen as the winner of the Progress App Innovation Awards for the Best Healthcare App/Solution. The Progress App Innovation Awards showcase game-changing business applications and digital experiences.

We are honored to be considered among the leaders in digital health innovation and a driving force of MHealth app adoption. A good provider/patient/payor relationship is multi-faceted and today it’s a patient as a consumer landscape where providers need to extend care beyond the clinic.

Case Study: Washington University School of Medicine

Saving Lives by Providing Crucial Content & Resources to those with Opioid Addictions: A Case Study with the Washington University School of Medicine and iTether Technologies

Challenge

The rates of opioid addiction in Arizona have risen to alarming levels in the last few years, with Arizona Governor Doug Ducey declaring it both an epidemic and a statewide health emergency during the summer of 2017. The U.S. isn’t faring any better in this area, either. In 2017, Blue Cross and Blue Shield (BCBS) released a report revealing the number of its members who had been diagnosed with an opioid addiction had skyrocketed by nearly 500% in a seven-year span. There’s no question that this issue has become a public health crisis and is claiming far too many lives in Arizona and in the greater U.S.

Investigators Connecting Health and Social Media (iCHASM) is a research team led by Dr. Patricia Cavazos-Rehg, clinically-trained & licensed psychologist and Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The iCHASM team wanted to address this problem, and find ways to recruit those suffering with an Opioid Use Disorder (OUD) into treatment, while simultaneously increasing their odds of recovery. But, the team had to first identify this at-risk group and then find a solution that would help them understand their recovery options, have access to them and be interested in pursuing them.

Solution

First, iCHASM relied on its expertise in social media to recruit and study >300 participants who met the criteria for an Opioid Use Disorder (OUD). Nearly all participants (99%) had abused more than one type of opioid in the past month and over half (53%) used ≥3 different opiates. Heroin was the most commonly used opiate (65%) followed by oxycodone (50%). Two-thirds of these participants were not engaged in treatment (67%), and a similar majority expressed the belief that their drug use was problematic (65%).

Next, iCHASM selected a strategic partner in iTether, the cloud-based platform, seeking to improve substance abuse recovery rates through delivery of evidence-based outcomes. The two entities engaged in a pilot program that supplied vital health information on evidence-based treatment recovery options for OUD. The team developed modules within the iTether app based on SAMHSA’s handbook, “Decisions in Recovery: Treatment for Opioid Use Disorder.”

The content delivered targeted information about the most effective medication-assisted treatment (MAT), how they work to assist recovery, their costs, research findings about their efficacy and potential side effects. iCHASM and iTether also used the iTether platform to disseminate video testimonials from people in successful OUD recovery that had used these medications as part of their recovery journey.

Results

iCHASM and iTether’s pilot program included 30 participants who were struggling with an OUD which lasted 3 months. The feedback was very favorable, with 80% of participants agreeing that the iTether app helped them have a better understanding of their OUD recovery options.

iCHASM and iTether have since enhanced the app with even more features meant to increase recovery rates, including:

After the success of this pilot program, iCHASM and iTether are eager to continue their work together and play a key role in moving Arizona and the greater U.S. away from the opioid epidemic that is claiming so many lives.

Prove Your App’s Value Quickly with Progress Health Cloud

Traditional HIPAA-compliant backend solutions can be very slow to develop and costly to build and maintain. Progress Health Cloud gets you to market dramatically faster.

Substance abuse recovery apps are not new. They’ve been around for years now, from AA’s digital ‘Big Book’ to Pear Therapeutics’ mobile 12-step program. What iTether has done, however, is something different.

Sean Gunderson, CEO and co-founder of iTether believes the first step in the fight against substance abuse starts by transforming the way treatment is delivered to patients struggling with addiction.

“The way it’s been done the last 40 years is through a paper-based system,” Gunderson explained. “You come into a program and get a booklet with a program you’re going to follow. Whether you’re a 19-year-old heroin addict or a 55-year- old alcoholic, you’re going down the same path. If that’s all you do, a 30-day in-patient clinical program, there’s a 90% chance of relapse within one year.”

Using Progress Health Cloud, iTether has developed an app and clinical portal that puts patient care in the hands of providers, allowing them unprecedented control over the recovery experience offered by the app. Where before a provider would either have to use the existing framework of an app, or simply not engage their patient outside of scheduled meetings, now they can check in 24/7 with an app customized to their specifications.

The iTether team initially began working with an outsourced development house, but the developer proposed a backend that would take upward of six months and hundreds of thousands of dollars to build. This simply didn’t work—the iTether team wanted to get a product to market as soon as possible to prove concept value.

While developing a brand new application from the ground up could have taken anywhere from six to eight months, doing it with Progress Health Cloud took a fraction of the time. The iTether team was able to build the backend in just one week and had a minimal viable product in beta in just over two months.

One of the key selling points for Progress Health Cloud was the fact that it was a HIPAA-compliant app cloud. If this wasn’t the case, it would have been up to iTether to gain HIPAA compliance and to maintain it—and that can cost millions of dollars and take far too much time.

A study at the Washington University Medical School has shown that over 75% of patients believe that the iTether app gives them more information and more motivation to make decisions regarding their health and recovery. 85% of patients surveyed agreed that they would use iTether in the future if they needed to make decisions about their recovery.

iTether allows for a data-driven approach to recovery, one that has traditionally been impossible. With the data that is fed to payers and providers alike, accountability, adaptability, and accessibility have become the prevailing forces in patient recovery. Using Progress Health Cloud, iTether is transforming the substance abuse recovery space and making it easier and more accessible for patients, providers, and payers.

Drug Overdose Related Deaths Reach 65,000 in 2016

An early calculation of 2016 drug deaths by The New York Times estimates that overdose deaths were as high as 65,000 last year. That is equivalent to a fully loaded 747 crashing 3x a week, EVERY WEEK, for a full year. The infographic below helps to visualize that shocking fact.

Imagine the panic and outrage that would result if these deaths were occurring in a more visible way. The drug overdose epidemic is now claiming more lives than both homicides and automobile accidents combined.

Here are some addiction facts about the U.S. opiate epidemic that really put this crisis into perspective:

Today, Americans consume 80% of the global opioid supply.

Opiate overdoses in the U.S. have more than tripled since 1999. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) reported that the number of drug overdose deaths has increased for the 14th consecutive year.

Many new heroin users actually started by misusing prescription opioids. About 80 percent of people in the U.S. who recently started using heroin report that they previously took opioid pain relievers for non-medical reasons. (SAMHSA)

In the U.S. there were 16.3 drug overdose deaths per every 100,000 people in 2015. In West Virginia there were 41.5 for every 100,000 people.
According to Health and Human Services, in 2015, 276,000 adolescents (12 to 17 years old) were current non-medical users of pain relievers, with 122,000 having an addiction to prescription pain relievers.

In 2015, more than 300 million prescriptions were written for opioids, which is more than enough to give every American adult their own bottle.

It is clear that this epidemic will continue, if not grow, if drastic steps are not taken to better prevent and treat addiction. Some of the priorities of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is to focus on improving access to treatment and recovery services and to provide support for cutting-edge research on pain and addiction.

Introducing iTether

iTether, LLC was established to develop applications for use in behavioral change services in the healthcare industry. With an initial focus in the substance abuse treatment sector, iTether products are customizable and integrated across all levels of treatment services – patients, providers, and payers. We deliver evidence-based outcomes which lead to performance-based payments. It is our mission to raise the standards in behavior modification services by engaging patients, delivering accountability, and improving long-term success rates.

Contact us to find out how we can partner!

About iTether

iTether Technologies was established to develop applications for use in behavioral change services in the healthcare industry.
With an initial focus in the substance abuse treatment sector, our products are customizable and integrated across all levels of treatment services – patients, providers, and payors. We incorporate context-aware interventions, track data analytics and deliver evidence-based outcomes which lead to value-based treatments and performance-based payments, and we provide outstanding customer support. It is our goal to raise the standards in behavior modification services by engaging patients, delivering accountability, and improving long-term success rates.